Department of Homeland Security Uses Twitter for Monitoring Citizens
By Emily Stanton
July 18, 2013
The Department of Homeland Security uses this Twitter account to monitor
issues of national security, newly-released documents reveal.
On the heels of revelations about National Security Agency spying, it turns
out the Department of Homeland Security has its own way of keeping tabs on
the American public via social media.
New documents show DHS's National Operation Center has been using Twitter to
monitor the public and 337 accounts of interest.
No tweets have been posted from the account, @DHSNOCMMC1, and it does not
appear to accept follow requests. The Twitter accounts DHS follows remained
private until Freedom of Information Act documents revealing the accounts
were posted by government transparency group MuckRock Wednesday.
Among the accounts it follows are a mix of news organizations, police and
fire departments, emergency management agencies and utility companies. The
only individuals followed are District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray and
FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate.
In 2012, the Daily Mail revealed a list of keywords being tracked by the DHS
on social media, including "Mexico," "nuclear," "flu," and "pork." Twitter
applications TweetDeck and TweetGrid were used to monitor tweets according
to the MuckRock documents. Over a six-month period the National Operations
Center generated more than 9,300 "item-of-interest" reports from its social
media monitoring program, according to California Watch.
"The Department of Homeland Security's National Operations Center employs
social media monitoring for situational awareness purposes only, within the
clearly defined parameters articulated in our Privacy Impact Assessment, to
ensure that critical information reaches appropriate decision-makers," said
DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard in a statement emailed to Whispers.
==========================================
(F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this
message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to
these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed
within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with
"Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976.
The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The
Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain
permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials
if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting,
teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria
for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies
as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four
criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is
determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not
substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use
copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS
PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment